


taking friendly fire

by okayantigone



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Autistic Character, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Not Bruce Banner friendly, The Avengers are not a family, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 14:19:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15463284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: In the aftermath of the media-dubbed Avengers Civil War, Tony Stark struggles with understanding the people around him, and defining to himself the concept of friendship, and what being someone's friend entails.Hindsight is 20/20.





	taking friendly fire

Tony Stark is a genius. He doesn’t often have to dwell on the fact – his accomplishments, frankly, speak for themselves. The skipped grades and published scientific papers, the amount of innovation he pioneered simply by tinkering in his lab – he stabilized Extremis while half drunk and trying to get into Maya Hansen’s pants, and built a miniaturized arc reactor while being waterboarded in an Afghan cave.

 

Rationally, in his brain, he knows he is a genius. People tell him so, and often. The problem isn’t that Tony Stark is unintelligent. The problem is that he is, in his own not-so-humble estimate, simply rather stupid.

 

It’s a failing of his socialization, maybe, another thing that can be blamed on his father, that he lacks the capacity for understanding of other people.

 

Machines? Oh, he does just fine with machines. He coded JARVIS with the full spectrum of human emotion, and JARVIS learned, but Tony… Tony didn’t.

 

He couldn’t tell when people were angry, or bored, or annoyed, didn’t understand the signs of someone desperately wanting him to shut up, didn’t grasp the nuances of being lied to to his own goddamn face. Obadiah knew. He had always known about Tony’s monumental stupidty, the chink in his then-metaphorical armour, which was that Tony Stark did not get people.

 

Jarvis had been patient in talking him through the meaning of facial expressions and popular idioms.

 

JARVIS was coded to make jokes, and then state “sarcasm” or “joke” or “irony” or “metaphor” until Tony could grasp the fine nuances of humor and idiomatic speech, and make them his own. His jokes always landed – he was objectively attractive and he had money, so even if he hadn’t learned in the fine acting school of Edwin Jarvis and JARVIS, thye would have landed, but his sense of humor became part of his charm, as did his bewildered reaction to being faced with the deeper, finer points of the human emotional experience.

 

Tony Stark doesn’t do feelings well fit perfectly in his image of the self-centered egotist, but was also as glaring as an A- on his report card of human interaction.

 

He felt that his performance was surely good if even Natasha had failed to pick up on it, and it never occurred to him that maybe Natasha struggled similarly to perceive and decipher emotional responses, having had hers scrubbed clean in the Red Room. Instead, he took her lies to his face as what they were – another mark against him, for being so goddamn stupid he couldn’t even tell when he was being lied to.

 

It happened with Obadiah, it happened with Natasha. He was just dumb. He needed someone smarter than him to do the heavy lifting. But Rhodey bear was very busy, and Pepper was getting fed up with what she perceived to be a continuous refusal to learn, when his best efforts came just short of enough.

 

All he knew of being a real person, as opposed to a hermit mechanic who built clever machines came from movies, and TV shows, and he leaned on them for guidance when his own limited experience, fraught with betrayal and the superficial veneer his money afforded him came up lacking.

 

He grappled with the concept of friendship insomuch as it applied to him.

 

Rhodey was his friend. They had been college roommates for four years. If Rhodey didn’t like Tony living with him, he would have switched dorms, but Rhodey seemed to like him. Rhodey laughed at Tony’s jokes, and made his own. He didn’t belittle Tony. None of his jokes were mean. Rhodey was nice. Rhodey didn’t hit him or tell him to shut up. Hindsight is 20/20 – Tony’s bar had been pathetically low back then, but Rhodey was his knight in a tracksuit.

 

He and Pepper were… friendly. Was she a friend? TV told him it was impossible to be a friend with your girl _friend_ but the articles JARVIS complied with him said otherwise. Pepper was mean to him sometimes, but it was for his own good, because she was smarter in the areas that he was stupid So she was a maybe.

 

Happy was… not a friend. Happy worked for him, and he was nice, and they made jokes, but Happy was not his friend, because Tony was paying Happy’s salary. That was an important distinction, that Tony had decided to impose on himself. You can’t be friends with people who work for you. Pepper was different. Technically, Tony worked for her.

 

Then came the Avengers. The Avengers were…  weird. In the limited list of people he considered friends, Tony put them down as a solid maybe, until he could figure them out.

 

Natasha wasn’t his friend, he’d decided it way back when. Friends didn’t lie to each other. That’s what the Internet, and the movies, and the TV shows said. So Natasha wasn’t his friend, but he was still going to be nice to her, and give her shiny new tech, because then it minimized the chance of her being mean to him, stabbing him again, saying horrible and untrue things about him again, that he lacked the ability to articulate to argue with.

 

Clint Barton was Natasha’s friend. But he was funny – Tony _got_ his jokes, and Clint’s jabs at him seemed well-meaning. They weren’t mean, like Nat’s. Tony liked Clint. He wanted Clint to like him too. The other man seemed so well-adjusted, and just _easy_ and comfortable in his own skin, even after Loki fucked with his head, and Tony really, really wanted someone so normal and personable to like him. He always put his best foot forward with Clint, and Clint always seemed to appreciate it. As far as Tony was concerned that made them friends. He gifted Clint as many new and cool archery-related gadgets as he could think up, because Tony loved his friends, and his friends deserved nice things.

 

He was a bit on the fence about Captain America. Steve Rogers. His childhood hero, the man who would one day kick the door down and punch Howard in the face, scoop Tony up in his arms, and make sure no one hit Tony or yelled at him ever again. Then Captain America yelled at Tony and threatened to hit him.

 

And yet, Steve was Captain America. And yet Steve was now Tony’s _teammate_ and desperately and pathetically, Tony wanted to impress him. Wanted Steve to think that Tony was charming and smart. Wanted to be worthy of his consideration, to be a person Steve really could call a _friend,_ and maybe, maybe, convince himself that he’d been right all these years ago as a stupid child, and Steve would have saved him if he’d been able to, that Tony would have been worthy of Steve saving him. He wasn’t sure if his efforts were one-sided or if being friends simply worked different in the 40’s. He couldn’t tell. But Steve was nice to him, and it was a win. He and Tony lived together in Avengers tower. Therefore, they were friends. That’s how it had worked with Rhodey, after all.

 

If Steve really hated Tony, it stood to reason that he wouldn’t have bothered to be nice to him, and live in the same house as him, and talk to him.

 

Thor was… an odd case. He called Tony his shield-brother, which Tony knew meant they were more than friends. There was no gift he could offer Thor that would be in the same caliber of a ready and open expression of acceptance. A god had come down to Earth, seen Tony and found him not just _enough_ but _worthy._ Tony opened his finest single malts and shared them all with Thor, and ordered in the most exotic foods he could get his hands on, which were all of them, and told Thor about the machines he built, and Thor – Thor listened, serious and patient, and looked at Tony’s eyes, which still reflected the dying stars from the other side of the portal, and called him _brave._  Yeah. He and Thor were friends.

 

And Bruce – Bruce was the one Tony wanted to be friends with the most. Bruce was smart, like Tony. He knew science. He never made fun of Tony’s problems with articulation, and his coffee addiction. He listened to Tony talk about his experiments. Bruce was _awesome._ And Bruce… had saved Tony’s life. That alone didn’t make them friends, but Bruce also took Tony up on the offer of moving in, and Tony was so absurdly, stupidly happy and grateful – he’d been following Bruce’s work for _years._ Being in the lab together, and working side by side was a dream Tony hadn’t realized he had until he’d achieved it, finally able to freely communicate with someone on his own level of intellect, in many ways, someone who was actually smarter and more qualified than him. Bruce beat him by number of PhDs that were earned fair and square. Thee of Tony’s five were honorary, so they didn’t really count.

 

Tony was happy he had friends. He had friends, plural. Not just his platypus. And these were friends he hadn’t even needed to build for himself!  If only Howard could see him now. He was _friends_ with Captain America.

 

And he was also stupid, and he should have gotten a clue when his death was announced on national television, and none of his friends came to help. He tries to justify it to himself – that they were mourning him, that they didn’t know what else to do, that they couldn’t have come to help him with the Mandarin if they didn’t know he was still alive, and a part of his brain that still remembered the imprint of his father’s palm on his cheek wondered why they hadn’t come to him _before._ But SHIELD’s job wasn’t to apprehend international terrorists, and his friends worked for SHIELD. It wasn’t their _job_ to help him.

 

And besides – they couldn’t help if they didn’t know something was wrong. Tony rationalized that to himself. It’s not like he’d especially _confided_ in any of them. So how could they help him? That one was on him.

 

It was Bruce he thought he was closest to, so he went to Bruce. After his surgery, after he’d laid in bed the appropriate amount, and was finally so, so pleased and relieved to return to the peaceful spaces of their lab, and Bruce was there, and Tony wanted to _talk_ to him, because that’s what one did with their friends.

 

Maybe it was Tony’s fault for not realizing Bruce was tired. His monumental stupidity reared its head again, and made him embarrass himself in front of one of the few people he genuinely cared about impressing.

 

He’d always had trouble telling when people were getting tired of listening to him talk, and Brucie-bear was just too nice to say anything, but he’d fallen _asleep_ while Tony talked about the reason he’d had fourteen hours of surgery and owed Doctor Stephen Strange, Doctor Wu and Doctor Cho flying cars, rockets to Mars, and prime real estate in Earth’s forthcoming space colonies for the work they’d done to keep him alive.

 

“Were you… actively napping?” He doesn’t quite manage to keep the hurt out of his voice, but he summons his good humor to mask it, because he doesn’t want to be mad at his friend, confused as he is. He must have missed something.

 

Bruce looks so apologetic and bashful that Tony is almost ready to forgive him, except then Bruce says the Thing. Tony thinks about Bruce saying the Thing a lot, in the months after.

 

“I’m not that kind of doctor.”

 

Like Tony had been looking for a therapist. Tony had a goddamn therapist. He had five of them. One for his PTSD, one for his addictive personality, one for his obsessive compulsions, one for his nonspecified autism spectrum syndromes and one for his AD-something. Splitting his issues like that was the best way to ensure the only way a tell-all exposè about him could be published was if they _all_ simultaneously broke their respective NDAs and coordinated with each other. It was a moot point – everyone knew he was an alcoholic, Howard was an asshole and Tony’s PTSD was proof of his heroics, and the other three were just on par with the course of being a genius.

 

This time he doesn’t succeed in masking the hurt that flashes across his face. Obadiah used to say Tony had baby deer eyes – could never hide anything with his eyes, so he’d taken to wearing aviators to meetings.

 

“I – “ he pauses, because he isn’t sure how to verbalize what he’s feeling. He wanted to be angry and accusing, but he wasn’t really angry. Not at Bruce, at least. At his own stupidity, maybe. At his own failure yet again. “I thought you were that kind of friend,” he says instead, painfully. The word feels sour on his tongue. Tainted, like he’s misused it. He brince a grimace of a smile to his face. “My bad.”

 

He moves back to his own lab, after. Lets Bruce have his space. Too many volatile substances around him anyhow. No need to add Tony to the mix. He thinks maybe he ought to redefine his concept of friendship.

 

But he also thinks, maybe, it was just a fluke with Bruce. They’re just not there yet, it’s fine. Maybe Bruce is the one who didn’t want to be presumptuous – he was still self-conscious of Tony’s generosity.

 

The Avengers are still his friends. _Captain America_ is still his friend.

 

He’s so fucking _stupid._

 

Steve and Natasha don’t call him in the SHIELDRA fiasco, but that’s okay – it’s government secrets, they don’t trust the world’s most dangerous hacker with them ~~even though they release the whole thing on the Internet instead.~~

Then Ultron happens, and everyone is pissed at Tony, even though Bruce was right there in the lab with him, and the two of them worked _together_ so it isn’t like Tony made Ultron completely unaided, except no one wants to hear it.

 

Thor grabs him by the throat and for a moment Tony is convinced the god will kill him, which is a badass way to go, but Thor is his _friend_ and the movies told Tony friends don’t hurt each other.

 

No one cares that Tony’s best friend just died. No one tries to console him. Not even Pepper and Rhodey bear. Tony was dumb, and he did a bad thing, and everyone’s mad. He even got hit this time, so it’s just like when he was five all over again.

 

Then no one wants to hear it about Wanda, and how goddamn _scared_ he is of her. He’s terrified, and he’s ashamed, and Bruce _left_ and he was still the one Tony felt closest to. He doesn’t want to touch on the fact that he considered Clint a friend, and Clint hid an entire ass family form him, because it hurts too much. It’s better if he leave the team.

 

The Avengers are still his friends. _Captain America_ is still his friend.

 

Then Captain America rams his shield into Tony’s chest, because Tony gets upset that Steve spent years _lying_ to him, and Tony’s brilliant, genius brain can no longer find a way to justify it, to warp itself around the idea that this was somehow Tony’s fault. If he’d been more genuine, more personable, less obnoxious, less flashy, less annoying.

 

 _Steve lied._ Steve was supposed to be Tony’s friend, and he _lied_.

 

Steve says “He’s my friend,” and Tony says “So was I,” but hindsight is 20/20. Captain America was _never_ Tony’s friend.

 

After Siberia, he lays in a hospital bed. He goes through his list. His friends are Rhodey, DUM-E, Butterfingers, and U. Now that he doesn’t work directly for him, Happy is also his friend. FRIDAY is his friend, and TAKASHI and JOKASTA. The working definition is really, back to college basics. People who don’t tell him to shut up, people who don’t hit him, and people who aren’t mean to him.

 

The Avengers are _not_ Tony’s friends. And Captain America … Captain America is a _liar._

Maybe, Tony thinks, his first clue should have come with Bruce.


End file.
